BOSTON, November 6 —  “Bloomberg is NO Public Health Hero” was the rallying cry of activists at this year’s meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA).  APHA leadership was giving New York City Mayor Bloomberg the “Legislator of the Year” award, down playing the NYC mayor’s racist stop-and-frisk program targeting hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino men was unimportant, given his anti-smoking, anti-gun and anti-soda stances.
PLP members and friends organized several anti-racist campaigns at this year’s public health meeting, along with the Medical Care Section of APHA, and Radical Public Health students from Chicago informed the 13,000 attendees. They worked with fighters in several APHA Sections to write a formal protest letter to the Executive Board, and distributed over 2,000 leaflets exposing the Board’s decision.  Many thanked us and could not believe racist Bloomberg would be given a public health award.
The Black Caucus of Health Workers sponsored a session on Mass Incarceration that drew over 50 people. Students presented data on the full scope of damage by the “War on Drugs” on communities and individuals.   This war targets black and Latino men and women with arrests and imprisonment for minor drug possession and non-violent crimes.  While government data show that white and black people use and sell drugs at similar rates, the cops arrest and courts convict blacks at a disproportionate rate.  In Washington, DC, 90 percent of adults arrested for drug possession are black while they represent less than 50 percent of the residents.
Conviction for drug offenses deprives communities of parents and workers, social support, and partners.  Returnees face barriers to housing, jobs, food stamps, and other necessities, keeping the unemployment and homeless rates high among black workers.  The APHA journal reported that people on parole lose two years of life for every year in prison, leading many to call this an “early death sentence.”
The ruling class uses this policy to criminalize, pacify, and marginalize a population that has led major rebellions and reform movements in the past.  The policy continues the enslavement of black workers that started with slavery and continued with Jim Crow laws. Like stop-and-frisk practices, it increases the stereotypes that black men are all drug dealers who deserve punishment and blame for high unemployment rates, poor graduation rates, and violence.  This lies at the base of the racism the capitalists need to deflect anger from their exploitation of all workers.
Speakers analyzed the superprofits the capitalists make off  racism and the loss of wages and jobs from privatization of schools, transit and housing.  A member of PLP highlighted the fight for jobs at Washington, DC METRO for people returning from prison.  Plans for protests, resolutions and sessions at next year’s meeting in New Orleans came out of this intense program.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Think Global, Act Local”.  Our continuing fight against cholera in Haiti showed that PLP and our friends go way beyond this sloganeering.  We were important in helping organize an extraordinary evening session on Haiti that was put on by the Black Caucus, anti-cholera campaigners and people from Haiti who are suing the UN to compensate victims and develop clean water systems. Sanitation and mass vaccination against cholera are effective and possible, but the countries that want to profit from Haiti as a mass sweatshop are not interested.  Only 1 percent of Haiti’s population has been vaccinated because there is no money to ramp up vaccine production there.
A Center for Disease Control engineer described a “long-term” safe water project but said only about 10 percent of the needed money is in the pipeline. Cost estimates range from  $800 million to $2 billion, which  the UN should pay and pull out it troops.  A sharp debate at an earlier session focused on the role of the U.S. in destroying the economy and autonomy of Haiti and allowed a political discussion of the role of imperialism.  
Many other activities linked our Party to this mass organization.  We presented a poster on “Capitalist Determinants of HIV” which compared a communist approach to public health to the limited programs in the U.S.
A friend chaired the growing Jail and Prison Health Committee within the Medical Care Section.  This committee can sponsor events next year and her  resolution on Mental Health and Prison  can be used in advocating reforms during the year.  The traditional Troublemakers Breakfast also drew in new students and APHA members to discuss the role of APHA under capitalism and the need to challenge the system as we build for revolution.  On to New Orleans!

NEW YORK CITY, October 29 — The retiree association of District Council 37 voted today to support the activities of the Committee for Justice for Kyam Livingston who died in a Brooklyn holding cell on July 21. The association, which represents 50,000 retired NYC government workers, will help circulate the petition seeking Justice for Kyam and will accept contributions for activities backing the aims of that committee.
The retirees voted this support out of an understanding that what happened to Kyam could have happened to many of our members, their children or grandchildren. Our collective experience in the union movement taught us well the lesson that unity of black, Latino and white workers, men and women, is the only way we can move forward. Also, many of us understand that the principled fight against racist police violence is an important way to build real unity.

BROOKLYN, NY, October 21 — “Justice for Kyam Livingston — killed in a Brooklyn cell” echoed down the cold, darkening, windswept street outside 120 Schermerhorn St. here today. This is the courthouse that holds the local Central Booking, backing on to the Brooklyn House of Detention. The gathering of more than 120 chanting people was multi-racial, young and old, men and women. Although the street was dark and cold, the fire of the words burned against the walls of Central Booking.
A number of cops stood in front of the courthouse’s wide door as the chants continued. Several speakers talked about Kyam Livingston who had called out for medical attention for over seven hours from her cell. She received none and died there on a bench with only the other detainees to help and comfort her. That’s what gave her mother’s words such strength.
Holding up the urn with Kyam’s ashes, between anguished sobs, she told the story of how her daughter’s cries for help were spurned by the jailers. Kyam’s son also spoke about his growing understanding of the system that could callously do this to his mother. One young man emceed the gathering while two people kept the chants going between speeches.
The first hearing of the case against the City occurred in federal court earlier in the day. The City outrageously refuses to hand over the surveillance tapes of events in the cell the night Kyam died, or the names of the cops on duty at the jailhouse. Instead they questioned the family about Kyam as a person, as though she was the offending party. The arrogance and callousness of the system becomes more apparent every day.
This is where Kyam’s son learned a lot more about how the working class is officially oppressed. According to the official rules, Kyam should have been given medical attention when she was first in distress. Instead, all she and her cellmates received from the cops was the notice to “shut the f*** up or we’ll lose your paperwork.”
Kyam’s mother could not contain her sorrow. She walked up the steps between the cops and right into the courthouse where everyone could see her from the street. She tightly held the urn with her daughter’s ashes. She then walked out between the security people, went to the microphone and spoke of taking her daughter out of the jail. “Now you’re free,” her mother said. There were few dry eyes among the gathered supporters.
A teacher who works with the Justice for Shantel Davis Committee spoke, linking the system responsible for both deaths. Later another speaker told the group that the “elephant in the room is racism,” and that racism must be fought constantly. He led the chant, “Racism means, fight back!” which everyone took up. Another speaker challenged the security guards standing on the steps to think about what had happened, and about how people are treated inside that building. Other chants and speakers demanded release of the tapes, the cops’ names and for a thorough investigation of conditions inside the jail.
The Justice for Kyam Livingston Committee will continue to be active and hold demonstrations on the 21st of every month, the monthly anniversary of her death. The committee’s growth and those involved are a good sign of people refusing to accept the pat answers that capitalism gives us for the tragedies it causes. The sale of CHALLENGE during this demonstration was another good sign. The struggle may be long, but the goal is our future.

SOUTH TEL-AVIV, October 13 ­— Hundreds of workers of various ethnicities — Jews, Palestinians and African refugees — marched in the south of the city against the horrible neglect of their neighborhoods by the racist, capitalist city hall. They called for the dissolution of the “ghettos,” for an end to racial segregation and for power for the local residents. This working-class rally came a mere week after a racist march by fascists, also in south Tel-Aviv, against the “infiltrator problem” (what racists call the African refugees, who escaped genocide in Darfur or murderous tyranny in Eritrea.)
While the fascist thugs do the bosses’ bidding by dividing workers and blaming the victims for the horrid conditions of the working-class neighborhoods, today the working class fought back and placed the blame on the real culprits: city hall and its capitalist masters. The workers came in high spirits with signs and drums, and the cops didn’t dare to obstruct their way. Progressive Labor Party distributed an anti-racist flyer, as well as CHALLENGEs in Hebrew, Arabic and English, which were well-received.
The mayors of Tel-Aviv have been neglecting the southern part of the city, which is mostly working-class (both Jewish and Arab), for decades. While fat-cat mayor Ron Huldai authorizes the construction of fancy high-rise towers for the rich, the south suffers from failing infrastructure, bad public transit, pollution and massive crime. The area around the central bus station has a high concentration of drug pushers, striptease halls and brothels, where, in many cases, human trafficking victims are being exploited. Muggings of workers and rape of working-class women by criminals are commonplace. This has existed for decades, while the cops do nothing. The sewage runs in the streets and rats abound. All of this contrasts to the fancy, northern parts of town, where the mostly Ashkenazi (European Jewish) small-scale bosses and bourgeoisie dwell; there crimes are solved or moved to the south, and infrastructures are good.
In the early 2000s, thousands of workers fleeing East Africa went north to Egypt, where they were murdered by Egyptian soldiers (who, according to testimonies we have heard, get an evening off duty for every refugee they kill). Others are kidnapped by local criminals in Sinai and held for ransom while being tortured. So they flee further north to Israel, where the government intensifies these racist attacks by busing them straight from the border to the already overcrowded working-class neighborhoods of South Tel-Aviv. They rarely get work permits and are forced into the underground low-wage economy.
These refugees work at starvation wages for local contractors, who pay them as little as $3-$4.5 USD per hour, about half the minimum wage. They are further exploited by slumlords, who pack ten of them into a tiny apartment at high rent. Survival “crime” is common, as many refugees must steal in order to eat.
But of course the bosses’ government blames the refugees! The local fascist politicians accuse them of spreading diseases and crime, call them racist names. Slum residents are being taught by the government to blame the refugees for the neglect of their neighborhoods. But things are changing.
A working-class fighter whom PLP knows and used to hold strong racist ideas, said to us at the demonstration, “it’s a shame not many people from the slums come to this kind of demonstrations. It’s because of racism.” She is beginning to see that racism is the enemy of the working class.
Multi-racial working-class unity is the real way to change how South Tel-Aviv is being neglected by the government of the rich. By building working-class consciousness and eventually, building our revolutionary Party, we stand a chance of turning things upside down. When the communists liberated China 64 years ago this month, they ended slums, freed and rehabilitated the prostitutes, shot the pimps, pushers and slumlords and eliminated opium dens. For three decades they struggled to build a society free from those ills. While their achievements were eventually reversed, we can learn from their experience and build ourselves a new world from the ashes of the old. Join us!